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Networking XP Home edition

Hello everyone - hope all is well and that hopefully some of you fine people can shed some light on the most annoying problem I currently have!

Basically, a couple of people that i work with have been provided with a laptop complete with Windows XP home Edition I dont know why, before my time!!

anyway, the problem has arisen that they cant fully network two machines together. If he / she connects their laptop to another running XP professional or Windows 2000, then he / she has no problems reading or copying to / from that machine. However the XP Prof / 2000 machine cannot access the XP Home edition machine, indicating that you do not have the correct permissions. Now, being a Network Administrator i understand how to set permissions, how to enable file and print sharing etc. All this i cannot do with Home edition, there is no permission options. v.v.v.v.v. frustrating!

They deliberately left out the business networking functions (domains) from XP home so you would have to buy pro. So you will never be able to log into a domain using the XP home like you want to .

There is a trick to get the security permissions dialogs showing in Home. Boot into safe mode and do the permission there. Also make sure you have users with the same passwords as the users on the domain set up on the home machine or they wont be able to log in

Thanks for that Grinler, unfortunately the XP Home laptops are out of the office, so i cant put that to test at the moment.

I stumbled across the fact that you could change permissions in safe mode, but to no avail when trying to access it.

Currently the solution that would suit us until we upgrade to XP pro, is to be able to network via a X-over cable, two laptops together. So, if i put them in the same workgroup (i.e. WORK), and give them the same username and password details, and set the permissions in safe mode (phew...big breath), then they will be able to communicate? i.e. access files and folders not just be able to ping each other!